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I was so honored to be interviewed by Shelley Tremain in the 28th monthly installment of the Dialogues on Disability series, hosted by the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog. Our conversation was posted this morning! It covers all kinds of topics, including my experiences with anxiety, the social construction of disability, disability in the university, and my recent academic work.

The Discrimination and Disadvantage blog hosted a symposium this week on my book. The commentaries from recent Author-Meets-Critics sessions this spring at philoSOPHIA and the Canadian Philosophical Association were posted one-by-one and my response to them was posted today.

I’m looking forward to the panel on my book, The Bioethics of Enhancement, to be held this Wednesday at the Canadian Philosophical Association (Congress) in Toronto.

Thanks to Shelley Tremain, who organized the panel, and to the commentators (who I also had the pleasure of working with during last month’s book panel): Ladelle McWhorter, Jane Dryden, Catherine Clune-Taylor, and Shelley. Thank you, again, to each of you! I’m thrilled to reconvene!

I’m looking forward to the panel on my book, The Bioethics of Enhancement, to be held this Saturday at philoSOPHIA in Boca Raton.

Thanks to Shelley Tremain, who organized the panel, I’ve been lucky to receive incredible and helpful comments on my work and related issues from: Ladelle McWhorter, Jane Dryden, Catherine Clune-Taylor, and Shelley. Thank you to each of them! I can’t wait.

Thanks to Luke Ford for interviewing me for the latest episode of Salt Talks. I had a great time discussing the theme of disability and gaming! We talked about the treatment of disability in games and some of the ways gaming is political and can have impacts on disability rights, inclusion, and exclusion. Check it out!

She writes: Life-extensionists’ zeal for perfect cells does, to some, sound like an invective against uniqueness. That’s what Melinda Hall, a philosophy professor at Stetson University and author of a recent book about transhumanism, takes issue with. “People with disability are saying, ‘this is a primary part of my identity,’” she told me, “so when you’re saying you want to get rid of disability, it sounds genocidal.”

Istvan dismisses disability-rights advocates as a fringe minority, saying “I would bet my arm that the great majority of disabled people will be very happy when transhumanist technology gives them the opportunity to fulfill their potential.” (Betting your arm is, of course, no biggie when you can just get a bionic one.)

In general, Hall said, the transhumanists have the wrong idea about the problems facing humanity. “People are going to be starving and dying, but we’re going to build a colony on Mars?” she said, “That’s going to cost billions of dollars, and I think that should be spent somewhere else.”